Reverb is a tough little monster to get “right” and we all know that “right” is subjective. There are reverbs that are space accurate and then reverbs that “just sound good.” The Tech21 Boost R.V.B. isn’t a reverb pedal that is seeking out to model “exact spaces” but it is a reverb that, in a […]

The Rocktron Big Crush is a fairly standard compression pedal with a basic set of controls including output level, attack and sustain. It can run off of one 9-volt battery or an external power supply. If you are looking for a transparent noise free compression this does a pretty good job with that. There is […]

The Rocktron Hush pedal is a noise reduction pedal with a super simplistic design and if used for the right type of noise it can be pretty effective. The Hush pedal is not a noise gate so it shouldn’t be confused with one. Unlike a noise gate. the Hush doesn’t clamp down on noise around […]

Room acoustics and audio treatment is a world unto itself… a world usually riddled with mathematic calculations, rocket science, and a strong dose of voodoo. For the sake of simplicity, article space, and personally sanity, I’m not going there. For most users, the important issues are simple things like “it works” and “it doesn’t work,” […]

Analog Delay. The kind of you thing you just can’t understand until you have had your hands on one. These were eventually replaced by digital delays due to the digital delay having longer delay times and crisp exact delays with no signal loss. Then, like most things analog, people realized that the analog delay […]

Armed with 18 wooden buttons (16 for the “piano” keys and 2 for mode/waveform/octave changes), 4 knobs, a jack for an external power adaptor, ¼” mono audio output, two LED’s and a built-in 3 watt speaker the original Pocket Piano first caught my eye late last year and after coming across the more recent […]

The Mochika XL is an analog synthesizer and step sequencer combo hand built by Atomosynth in Peru and is available for $249.00 US. There is a lot going on with this deceptively simple looking device so I’ll break down each of the major components one by one and I’ll start that off absolutely superficially… […]

The Akai MPK mini is a sub-$100.00 two octave USB controller with 24 mini keys, eight assignable knobs, 8 assignable MPC style pads, a fairly flexible arpeggiator and four program locations for saving your setups. It is powered via USB and that is the controllers sole means of power and connectivity so if you […]